02
Subscriptions
Click to subscribe. Call, beg and wait to cancel.
America’s federal click-to-cancel rule was struck down days before taking effect. The dark pattern survived the reform designed to kill it.
7 min read
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Subscriptions
Recurring charges, retention friction and the business of making exit harder.
10
Subscriptions
Shutterstock made the subscription easy to start—and hard to leave.
The FTC says Shutterstock charged consumers without informed consent and built a cancellation process that pushed people through support channels instead of a simple exit.
6 min read
11
Subscriptions
Netflix raised every plan. The catalogue did not get bigger overnight.
A 2026 price increase touched every Netflix tier, continuing a pattern in which streaming services move customers from growth pricing to extraction pricing.
5 min read
13
Subscriptions
Amazon called the cancellation flow an Iliad. Customers called it a trap.
A $2.5 billion FTC settlement over Prime enrollment and cancellation practices turned a notorious dark pattern into a refund process.
6 min read